The archæology of Rome, Part 7

JOHN HENRY PARKER C.B.
HON. M.A. OXON. F.S.A. LONDON etc. etc.

THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE, COMMONLY CALLED THE COLOSSEUM AT ROME: ITS HISTORY AND SUBSTRUCTURES COMPARED WITH OTHER AMPHITHEATRES.
BY JOHN HENRY PARKER, C.B. Hon. M.A. Oxon., F.S.A. Lond.; Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum of History and Antiquities in the University of Oxford, etc.
OXFORD: JAMES PARKER AND CO. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET. 1876.


We had all of us hitherto been taught that this enormous structure had been all built in ten years by the Flavian emperors; this is the uniform modern history, but no ancient author says so. It is only one of the so-called “Roman Traditions,” which (as I am obliged to repeat continually) are nothing but the conjectures of learned men during the last three centuries, especially Panvinius and his school in the seventeenth. In the present instance it is evident that so far from having been all built in ten years, it was more than a century about from first to last; it was begun in the time of Sylla the Dictator, by his step-son Scaurus, and is described by Pliny in his “Natural History” by the name of the insane work of Scaurus, who was called insane because he spent such an enormous fortune upon the work, (equal to more than two millions sterling of modern money). It is true that Pliny calls it a theatre and not an amphitheatre , and this has deceived scholars, who do not perceive that the two names were used quite indifferently at that period. Pliny himself contrasts it with the great theatre of Pompey, built long afterwards, and when the city had increased so much, yet which only held 40,000 people, while this building would hold 80,000. There is no other site in Rome where 80,000 people could be placed to see a show excepting this and the Circus Maximus, which is never called a theatre. An inscription has been found in the amphitheatre itself, in which it is called theatrum and not amphitheatrum, which is still a theatre , though it has two round ends to it, instead of one being flat. The celebrated Greek theatre at Taormina, in Sicily, which has the most perfect scena that is known anywhere, is still called by the people either theatre or amphitheatre indifferently, as I was told by the local guide on the spot, in May, 1876. Either a theatre or an amphitheatre was a place of public amusement.